Sure, it’s a dismal photo, but it’s all we got. By this time, we’d already been on the road for nearly two hours. This is looking south back into Texas on Highway 287 just north of Kerrick, Texas. Traveling this route involved a minor bit of backtracking, but we saw Rita Blanca National Grasslands on our map, and as we’d never seen such a thing, we took the detour. As we don’t have a fixed destination or a time when we need to return to Arizona, our opinion is we can go anywhere and do anything.

Staring into the sun has never been an ideal situation for Caroline, and so after one tries to get this selfie in front of the Welcome to Oklahoma state sign, I had to give up. This was our first visit to the Great Plains, and for that matter, it would be our first time together anywhere east of here for the rest of the trip.

We were never really sure where the “Grasslands” started and finished as most everything out here was flat and brown. The color of the landscape makes sense because it is well after summer and quickly approaching winter. This kind of flat expanse is something new to our eyes. If memory serves us, this is State Highway 171 traveling flat north.

Crossing into Kansas just south of Elkhart on Highway 56, staying away from the big roads.

It struck us that there is little out here besides grain silos, barns, and homes scattered about, and then we come upon this little “Beer To Go” shop with a drive-up window that doesn’t appear to have any way to drive close to. Or at least nobody has directed their vehicle there for a while. We’re still on the 56, heading northeast through Rolla, Kansas.

A standout city, this place is called Moscow, Kansas. It was here while getting gas ($1.63 a gallon) that an elderly guy approached me, curious about our Beetle. He’d not seen one yet in person and so he inquired about how we liked it. I assured him that it was amazing (I’d later grow to hate the thing). He asked if we were visiting family, and I answered no. He pointed out how far away the main highway was, and I agreed that it was a good place for it to be. Then he asked our ages, “Thirty-seven and thirty-two,” to which he said in near amazement how lucky we were to be so young and on such a big adventure. Those words stuck with me the rest of the trip, and little did I know then that they would travel with me for years into my future.

From time to time, we’ll take photos of places to act as reminders that we wanted to visit but didn’t have time or the place was closed while we were in the area. The Edwards County Sod House & Museum in Kinsley, Kansas, is one of those places. Note: Eighteen years later, we still haven’t made it back here.

We made a brief stop in Dodge City to visit the Boothill Museum but felt it was too expensive for what we saw. On the way out of Dodge, I had the “Epiphany Burrito,” which may have been the best burrito I’ve ever had. Back on the road, we took another break to visit the Fort Larned National Historic Site in Larned, Kansas. If there is an element of history to be learned about at any location we are traveling by, then more often than not, we feel compelled to stop. By the way, when we essentially pass through somewhere like Dodge City, the reasoning is if we can easily visit by catching a plane into a local airport and spend some quality time exploring more of what a larger city has to offer, we are probably using our time smarter by seeing the outlying areas.

This is our last daylight photo worth sharing; it’s of the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area. Trying to keep things rural and off larger roads occasionally takes us down dirt roads with the hope of getting a truly alternative view. I’d say we scored with this route, as I don’t believe sunset could have been any better than right at this moment. A half-hour later, we were passing through the Quivera Wildlife Refuge, but we weren’t ready to call it a day and decided to keep on driving. We ultimately made it to Atchison, Kansas, about 250 miles up the road.